Interview with Ward Kendall

Counter-Currents recently published a new edition of Ward Kendall’s 2001 novel, Hold Back This Day. As an enthusiast of dystopian and apocalyptic fiction, I had for years sought to lay my hands on a copy, only it was but intermittently available on Amazon, and even then at absurdly high prices. Thanks, however, to Greg Johnson, who tracked down the author, I was finally able to read the text. Kendall’s premise is grim: in the twenty-second century, the Earth is under the grip of a totalitarian system that has sought to eliminate war and inequality by destroying human biodiversity, something they have nearly achieved through a programme of psychological deracination, theological unification, and systematic miscegenation. Far from elevating the needy and righting social injustice, however, this global, century-long enterprise has equalised humanity downwards, and condemned an overcrowded planet to a slow descent into universal poverty, scientific regression, meaninglessness, dependence, and fear. At the point the narrative begins the White race is nearly extinct, erased from history except to be vilified, humiliated, stripped of its achievements. In sum, Kendall takes the present paradigm of egalitarianism and political correctness to its ultimate conclusion, and shows that the utopian visions of an establishment that is both well meaning and malevolent leads to oppression and the destruction of humanity and the Earth. In this interview we find out about the author, his early years, his quasi-nomadic life across the United States and overseas, and his troubled and now resurgent writing career.

You were born in 1954. How does today’s America differ from the America of your childhood?

Looking back to about the age of five, I still remember the separate whites-only and coloreds-only water fountains inside the US post office building. My mother always made certain we stayed clear of the latter.

Elsewhere, blacks (we called them ‘Negroes’ back then) were generally confined to their own neighborhoods and, again generally, I seldom saw them unless we ventured into the downtown areas of Ft. Worth or nearby Dallas. Today, by contrast, one’s eyes and ears are assaulted everywhere by the sights and sounds of non-whites—even before one makes it out the front door. Turn on the television set back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, for instance, and I’d see Captain Kangaroo, cartoons, and commercials—without a single non-white face evident.

Today, the TV set doesn’t just show you an occasional black or Hispanic face, but shoves entire hordes of them smack between your eyes with almost malicious glee. What else is different? The sense of being a ‘white nation’ is gone, that’s the worst difference. The sense of white community, white families, and whites themselves working together to put men on the moon, and not even caring if we used borrowed Third Reich technology to do it, because that technology had also come from whites.

What was taken for granted then that would be inconceivable today?

First and foremost: that America would always be a white nation. Yes, there would be the descendants of black slaves living here and there among us, some Chinese left over from the 19th century era of imported railroad labor gangs, and scatterings of Mexicans down on America’s southwestern border. But, taken as a whole, these non-whites comprised only about ten percent of the national population in the ‘50s and early ‘60s. They were there, but whites could largely ignore them since their numbers were generally inconsequential and they lived segregated from us. Other things that were inconceivable that are not so in 2011? Quickly: mass acceptance of inter-racial marriage, public displays of gross homosexual conduct, the vicious hatred spewed by black rap-music, and, most inconceivable of all, our government willingly accepting—even encouraging—the flooding of our country with tens of millions of illegal brown people.

From your early years, you travelled widely within and without the United States; indeed, you have lived in 11 different states, plus Guam and Germany. How did this quasi-nomadic life affect your outlook, attitudes, and habits? What did you learn from the experience?

Though I did not realize it at the time, I had unconsciously fallen into the same kind of nomadic existence that later I was to discover had been of the same nature that such early writers as Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain and Jack London had experienced, as well as more contemporary writers, such as Louis L’amour, for instance. What I learned from it all was how to be a careful observer of people, places, and circumstances; in particular, I might add, how to analyze the nuances of character that serve to distinguish each individual as unique—all very valuable ‘schooling’ for writers and not to be found inside any university.

What were your first impressions of Guam? How did life there differ from what you had known previously?

Located just 13 degrees north of the equator, Guam is a hot green hell of coconut jungle set beneath Mt. Lam Lam, the highest point on the island. Whites were few, so both my wife and I definitely stood out in downtown Agana, the town where we lived. The native people called themselves Chamorros, and were a variant of that tropical region’s Polynesian racial sub-group. Now, living amongst these non-whites was both interesting and unsettling at the same time. Interesting as long as my wife and I could be the observers, but unsettling whenever I paused to realize that these people probably did not want me there—nor the US Air Force base—nor even the hordes of Japanese tourists that swarmed Tumon Bay, the ‘Miami Beach’ of that island. While there, I imagined what Guam might be like if it were an all-white island. And you know what? It felt better thinking of it that way than seeing it as it actually was.

What were your first impressions of Germany? What did you end up liking most about the Germans, and what did you find most frustrating and perplexing about them?

My first impression of Germany, and particularly of Germans themselves, was: why on earth did we ever bomb the living hell out of these people? Everywhere my wife and I travelled in that beautiful green land, we met the nicest people we had ever met. But we bombed the sh*t out of you! I’d be thinking as some young Bavarian waitress smiled at me or some old man in München would walk up to offer kind directions to two lost Amerikaner. Their friendliness was what I will always remember about the Germans. And what will always perplex me about them? Strangely, the very same thing: their friendliness. How could that be, I wondered, after what they had endured?

You are best known for your 2001 dystopian-apocalyptic Science Fiction novel, Hold Back This Day (HBTD). You were 46 when it was first published. What motivated you to write it and to write it when you did and not before? What were your aims as a writer? What makes this novel unique?

Left: Ward Kendall, circa 1999, around the time Hold Back This Day was written. Right: The novel’s First edition.

I started writing Hold Back This Day within days after hearing on the television news that California would become predominantly Hispanic in the years to come, along with much of the Southwest. Something clicked, after hearing that. Call it some mental-trigger inside me, attached to a mental-gun. I was angry and I was ready to open fire. And with Hold Back This Day I did. Believe me, I had wanted to make it bloody, at first. Then, I paused and reconsidered. A more subtle approach was needed, and that is the route I eventually took. How is Hold Back This Day unique? I believe it’s the only novel so far to deal with the theme of white racial extinction. Races do become extinct, we know—the Neanderthal is the most famous example.

The novel exudes a profoundly pessimistic outlook; in the end, whether the good guys win or lose is somewhat ambiguous—the losses are so colossal, the outcome so catastrophic, as to apparently outweigh the wins.

In a sense, the ending of Hold Back This Day is not unlike the ending in John Wayne’s epic movie, The Alamo. At the end of that movie, what do we have but a hundred slaughtered whites and a gutted fort, with hordes of grinning brown invaders picking over the smoldering bodies. The men at the Alamo lost, that is clear. But they won as well, because their courage in the face of overwhelming odds galvanized their fellow white Texans to take up arms and ultimately drive Santa Ana’s brown invaders back into Mexico. So it is with Hold Back This Day: whites may well have to fight a racial ‘Alamo’ in some darkened future year as a last ditch effort against extinction. Thus, my novel asks: do we whites want to ‘hold back this day’ of doom, or not? Because, either we stand up now and take action, or we’ll just have to leave it to the last generation of whites to deal with. But by then, however, it may well be too late.

Do you not think that a resistance leader in a world where conditions have deteriorated to such an extreme degree would be a far darker and ambiguous character than how you present him in the novel? Extreme conditions demand extreme responses, do they not? And only someone willing to be completely ruthless would prevail in a world where the enemy will stop at nothing to get his way.

In deciding which way to take a novel’s story and characters, it is always best to know ahead of time what ‘slant’ you intend to put on it. Yes, I could have made Karl Ramstrom, the novel’s resistance leader, a much darker character. For instance, it was clear that the technology Ramstrom’s renegade white colony had could easily have dropped nukes on WorldGov, killing millions of non-whites. But the whole dichotomy of the novel’s theme would have been obscured to the reader had I done that. This is not a novel about white revenge against non-whites.

It is a novel about multiracialism, and whether or not it is ultimately beneficial and just to all mankind. It is not. Finally, I never intended whites to ‘win’ back the earth, once it had sunk so far into the brown quagmire. Solely, my objective was to warn. Dare let multiculturalism sweep your country and the world, and this dire consequence is very likely what the last whites will have to face. A final note on ruthlessness: if readers want ruthlessness, then please read The Towers of Eden when it’s reissued. The character of Dr. Paul Vogel is as cold and ruthless as they come, and you will never forget him.

While really grim dystopian fiction can be highly entertaining and be a more digestible way of articulating a serious message, I do wonder about what such pessimism says about the White race when it is about the White race, and whether it is does not present the latter as a race of losers in the evolutionary struggle. After all, losers are negative; and winners positive; moreover, people with a positive outlook are always more attractive. One thing is a grim novel about humanity’s extinction through a thermonuclear holocaust, a doomsday asteroid, or an apocalyptic virus, quite another is a grim novel about Whites being mostly weaklings and victims, architects of their own fate. Is this tactically sound? Would not the enemy read your novel and delight in the fact that Whites see themselves this way?

Let’s be ruthless here, Alex, by being brutally honest with ourselves. We are losing the race war right at this instant. Take a hard, uncompromising look at our so-called WN leadership. How many of them are convicted felons, without naming names? (and no, they weren’t framed, they were each guilty as charged) What does that say about our moral standards? About our tactical strategies? About the rank-and-file who continue to pump money into these dysfunctional excuses for WN leadership? Now, I do differentiate between the ‘intelligentsia’ of the WN movement—by and large comprised of sound individuals—and those who are the frontline ‘soldiers’—the ones that are always in the media-eye. I ask you: do you think they present an image of ‘winners’? Or is the opposite true? And, finally, who is to blame—the media for showing the leading edge of white nationalism as a seething clot of white hoods and swastikas and shaved heads and runic tattoos—or individuals like you and I who should point them towards a higher standard? So yes, a grim novel like “Hold Back This Day” is indeed a sound tactical strategy, since it tells the sick patient (we whites) what is going to happen if we go on the way we are.

From an evolutionist perspective, it could be argued that traits unique to Whites that paid off handsomely when the White race was harder and protected by geographical barriers now make Whites vulnerable to racial predators in an intensely competitive and overpopulated world that has lost much of the containments that formerly enabled societies to develop in comparative isolation. Whites have tendencies towards individualism and moral universalism that are arguably liabilities in a world where the strategy that best guarantees survival is the strategy present in most human societies: collectivism and moral particularism. Worse, Whites in the West have been infected with a crippling ideological virus that casts their race as one of oppressors who need to atone, compensate, and restitute. With this in mind, can we realistically hope for a future for the White race? Will we be eaten by our competitors before we can bring ourselves to eat them? And if you do see a future, how do we get there?

Yes, I do see hope and I do see a future for whites. Where do we begin? We begin here, in the United States, because if this country falls to non-whites, so goes the rest of Euro-civilization. I have written an outline for the revitalization of the WN movement that lays down 7 Foundations I believe are the best chance we have of forming a unified white nationalist movement in the US. With these Foundations, we will not be eaten. Foundation 4, for instance, explicitly details the cost and logistics for the removal and repatriation of America’s non-white population in a humane and responsible manner. Foundation 5 sets down the best kind of government a successful WN society should adopt. Under its guidelines, our present Democratic system would be scrapped. On the other hand, no Fourth Reich would replace it. That should leave some readers guessing.

It is clear that you have read Richard Lynn. What other books or authors have influenced you as a writer?

I was first enlightened on the matter of racial differences, particularly concerning the mental deficiencies of blacks, by a man named Coon. Carleton S. Coon, to be exact. A fitting name, that. Anyway, other books that have influenced my thinking include TheBell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability by Arthur Robert Jensen, as well as the various observations and opinions about race ventured by the controversial scientist Dr. William Shockely. In the field of fiction, I have read such classics as Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, influenced me in certain matters of plot and style. I have also been influenced by Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, A. E. van Vogt, and a few others in the field of science fiction. Currently, I enjoy such mainstream writers as Dean Koontz and Clive Cussler.

HBTD was published by Publish America. What were your experiences with this publisher?

None; I submitted the manuscript and they accepted it for publication. It was not ‘self-published’, as that typically means the writer paid to have his work printed. I paid nothing. Later, however, I and the owner of Publish America – a native Hollander – had somewhat of a disagreement over a certain matter, and I regained my rights to the book.

You told me that HBTD was re-incarnated a number of times, and I have seen it with several different covers. Yet, until now the book has been notoriously difficult to find, and for many years I saw it offered on Amazon for high prices. Please relate some of the vicissitudes that befell this novel during its publishing history.

After the debacle with Publish America I had Hold Back This Day reprinted through a printing house and reissued as a mass-market paperback. I sold the book via my website and amazon.com and between the two did fairly well. Eventually, Hold Back This Day caught the eye of one Daniel Friberg, a Swedish publisher of WN books. I ended up selling him the rights to Hold Back This Day for publication in Swedish only, keeping all other rights to myself, such as television and film rights. It is still being sold under the Swedish title Skymning over Tellus (Twilight Over Earth). Currently, Mr. Friberg now owns Arktos Publishing and has contacted me about bringing The Towers of Eden back into print. I have accepted his offer and I am now busy making a few revisions to the 600 page manuscript. One final note: Hold Back This Day did catch the eye of the Southern Poverty Law Center and ended up being written about in their so-called “Intelligence Report”. Guess I made my bones with that.

After HBTD you wrote another novel, an epic 700-page tome titled Windswept. Tell us about this project; what is it about, and what has been its publication history?

Windswept was the original title, connoting the sweeping away of an entire socio-political environment and replacing it with an ‘engineered’ one. Subsequently, the novel was renamed The Towers of Eden and pared down to about 550 pages and submitted to Del Rey Books in New York. It made it past the reject or ‘slush pile’ and ended up on the desk of one Shelley Shapiro, an editor. There the manuscript sat—in ‘committee’—I was later told, while editors and assistant editors mulled over those books they were seriously considering for publication. The Towers of Eden was one of them. Now, my book was not ‘anti-Jew’ (or pro-Jew) but it was a wee bit hard on America’s illegal aliens and blacks. Well, it took a year—no kidding—before I got an answer back. Close, but no cigar. Now, via Arktos Publishing, I hope to bring back The Towers of Eden.

HBTD has been re-published by Counter-Currents, which is one of several publishers, including the Wermod and Wermod Publishing Group (with its imprints Iron Sky Publishing and The Palingenesis Project), Washington Summit Publishers (with its imprint Radix), and Arktos Media, now actively seeking and publishing fiction and non-fiction from an elitist, Eurocentric perspective. How do publishing opportunities for authors of your mould differ from those available a decade ago?

I only wish such opportunities had existed a decade ago. I lost a lot of time mulling things over, wondering if I should even keep writing. I stopped altogether for a good five years, only jotting down ideas for novels every once in awhile. Beyond that, I basically dried up. Now, there’s finally water in the desert, after so long a trek without any at all. With such WN publishing houses now in operation, I believe the power of the written word can now work as a sledgehammer against the propaganda of multiculturalism. Break out the champagne!

What are your plans for the next five years?

To write more novels, for one thing. Secondly, to see my WN Foundations given a fair assessment as a viable alternative to the direction we are headed now. I won’t mince words here: even among WN’s I have my ideological enemies. I do not, for instance, support such nonsense as the so-called “New Orleans Protocol”. I do not support any kind of Neo-Nazi resurrection in the United States, any more than I support the resurrection of a Second Southern Confederacy. These fantasies must come to an end, as I clearly outline in my WN Foundations. So yes, I will be busy the next five years.

How would you like to be remembered in 100 years?

Well, I can’t say I want to be remembered as the ‘Old Man’, because that’s been taken already. Remembered? If I’m remembered at all, it will only be in a small way. But I would like my children’s children to say my name aloud, once in a while, and be told the one thing I want them to know: that I did it out of love for them and their future.

11 Comments

Ward Kendall says, “Take a hard, uncompromising look at our so-called WN leadership. How many of them are convicted felons, without naming names? (and no, they weren’t framed, they were each guilty as charged) What does that say about our moral standards? About our tactical strategies?”

I hope Mr. kendall is not including Matt Hale and Edgar Steele in that statement! Adolf Hitler spent time in prison, and he was a greater man than any White man alive today. Also, how does Mr. Kendall KNOW the people he has in mind were not framed? I prefer to take the side of my White Race and give my own people the benefit of the doubt, rather than trust in the integrity of the system that has shown itself to be anti-White.

Not speaking for Mr. Kendall, go to Steele’s conspiracypenpal website, and download his mp3 titled “Let’s Get Small.”

It is very, very insightful, and painfully relevant.

We can do all we dream of, and more, in an “apple pie, strictly legal, sort of way.” (HT: Jim Giles)

The direct use of force, save for limited, legal self-defense, is what our Enemies have “suggested” we do, repeatedly. Wearing NSDAP ununiform uniforms and green satin bedsheets in public is also their suggestion. All equally effective…

@ “I do not support any kind of Neo-Nazi resurrection in the United States”

Nazi costumes do look silly, but what about Covington’s idea of a tricolor flag, an umbrella symbol for tacit, not explicit National Socialism in America?

Although I am a fan of their novels this does not mean that I agree with everything that Pierce and Covington have said about National Socialism, as you can see in my recent comment in another thread, here.

@ “After all, losers are negative; and winners positive; moreover, people with a positive outlook are always more attractive. One thing is a grim novel…” Alex K.

One thing is for negativity to be understandable, another is for it to be a viable political strategy.

Someone who is negative is on the defensive, and is perceived as such because his position is the negation of a proposition and because a negation always comes after a proposition. This means the negative party is not active, but merely reactive. Unaccompanied by a counter-proposition, the reactive party is easily branded by the active one as a nay-sayer without solutions. In other words, someone who is losing and will continue to lose until he has completely lost because he doesn’t have a winning strategy.

This is not to say negativity does not play a role. What we need is to force the Left to adopt a negative discourse. Then we can easily brand Leftists as nay-sayers who have had their day, failed, and now, being the losers, refuse to hear the sound of change. (And is that not the sort of phrase they use to ridicule their opponents on the Right?)

Alex K., In the context of Kendall’s novel, it seems to me that the “negative” message is very powerful. Two of the most influential books of the 20th century, Orwell’s novel The Last Man (the editors changed the title to Nineteen eighty four) and Solzhenitsyn’s non-fictional Gulag were “grim” and “negative” too. Using the metaphor of the other thread it seems so obvious to me that the underlying positive message against Body-Snatched Pod Leftists is that remaining fully human (a “non-Pod” if you want to see it negatively) is the only way. There’s no more positive message I can imagine than an ethno-state where all of the Pod mores would be reverted back to the 1950s and in other instances back to pre-French Revolution times and still others even back to Greco-Roman times. Although it only looks negative if we define a normal human as a non-Pod, most white westerners are already “Pods”. This is the real problem. We cannot avoid being defined negatively by our enemies.

Yes, something is missing: that “normal people” (Pods actually) become humans again. That’s why they perceive real normality in negative terms (non-Podism). We must try to see this whole affaire as a photographic negative that only WNs can develop into a positive. But obviously Pods (i.e., “normals”) see black as white, white as black; dark greys as light greys, and light ones as dark.

In other words: forget the complains of so-called “normals”. They’re as spurious as the hysterical whims of the feminists who want to takeover white nationalism.

The paragraph that begins, “Let’s be ruthless here…” is the sort of cold, clear thinking that terrifies most of those who self-identify as White Nationalists, and seems to be the hallmark of our most discipline Opposition.

Good.

The paragraph that ends, “These fantasies must come to an end…,” is the perfect counterpoint.